The path to an Obama legacy

President Obama, a man of considerable pride, must be giving serious thought to the course he must follow to leave an outstanding legacy. I believe that, for him to be remembered as a highly consequential president, he will have to accomplish two major tasks. Both will be of great benefit for many years to come, but will be difficult to accomplish and politically very risky.

By TOM HIGBEE

capecodtimes.com

By TOM HIGBEE

Posted Feb. 13, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By TOM HIGBEE

Posted Feb. 13, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

President Obama, a man of considerable pride, must be giving serious thought to the course he must follow to leave an outstanding legacy. I believe that, for him to be remembered as a highly consequential president, he will have to accomplish two major tasks. Both will be of great benefit for many years to come, but will be difficult to accomplish and politically very risky.

The first task is to orchestrate bipartisan actions within the next two years that will bring our debt completely under control in less than 10 years and radically reform the tax code to raise revenues and encourage economic growth.

The second task is to engage the United States fully in an international battle to limit man's part in global warming, a phenomenon that will prove to be environmentally disastrous and exceedingly costly.

He will have to undertake those tasks in a struggling world economy and in the face of intense political opposition here and abroad.

Since World War II, we have been regarded as the "indispensable nation" because of our combined military, diplomatic and financial strengths. Now, by poor fiscal management, we have not only slowed our potential for growth because of excessive debt payments, but have diminished our ability to shape world events.

We also have reduced our resilience to responding to future shocks, which could include a collapse of the European market, military conflict in the Middle East, and/or a stream of environmental disasters. According to President Obama's Simpson-Bowles Commission and many analysts, we must achieve a "grand bargain" between Democrats and Republicans to really resolve our $16 trillion debt problem. This will entail new revenues (favored by the Democrats) and significant cuts and alterations to entitlement programs (favored by the Republicans).

If Mr. Obama wishes to achieve a lasting legacy on the financial front, he will have to forgo some of the spoils of his re-election victory, adopt various Republican entitlement cost-cutting proposals and anger many of his supporters. Basically, he will have to alter his current course and message and share credit with the Republicans in order to make a fix big enough to revitalize our economy.

He'll need a big fix to build his legacy.

Environmental scientists and most governments throughout the world believe that man-made global warming is a problem that will plague us for generations to come. With the United States and China in the lead, we are pouring harmful, long-lived greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in massive quantity. The world consensus is that the warming occasioned by these gases will present a host of intractable, hugely costly problems.

Clearly, the warming cannot be contained without the cooperation of all leading industrial powers and polluters, many of which disagree greatly on who is causing the problem and who should pay for fixing it. Inevitably, it will fall upon the United States to lead an international effort to find and implement technical and political answers in this immensely complex area.

For political reasons, the president and Congress have been virtually silent on global warming for the past two years. Now Mr. Obama must decide how much effort he'll spend on the difficult task of leading the United States and the world community in drastically changing its attitudes and practices toward pollution. He could choose to focus on other more tractable issues and pass global warming on to his successor. Or, he could choose to be first president to recognize the gravity of the problem and give it top priority.

I'm hoping that he, if fact, will make it his highest priority once he has finished with financial strategy. Then, he will have done his best to garner a consequential legacy.